The other day I was doing my semi-normal practice of browsing the Web for news and blog sites that would tickle my theological fancy. I came to the United Methodist Portal (a regular source of enjoyment for me) and found an essay by the Rev. Sky McCraken titled, “District superintendent sees failure of theological schools.” In the column, he thoughtfully speaks on the recent failure of theological schools in forming pastors into disciples before they go on to serve local churches.

Rev. McCracken argues that “the most sobering thing [he has] learned is that there is no correlation between education of clergy and clergy effectiveness.” He goes on yo point out that many pastors educated in theological institutions “have little or no spiritual depth, yet are appointed to churches to serve as spiritual guides and leaders.”

All of this leads Rev. McCracken to express his malaise, arguing that a seminary education may not be the best training for pastors anymore, or even necessary at all.

I will admit from the outset that I am more educated than I am experienced, seeing that I graduated from a United Methodist seminary in May 2011 and am serving a second year in my very first appointment in the local church. You can imagine my surprise that after three very difficult years of seminary training, I read that there is a very credible perception that my education was not formative spiritually. To that end, I would like to offer a counter argument.

Starts in local church

Before United Methodist candidates for ministry enter seminary, they are members of a United Methodist congregation. The candidacy process requires that one have a close relationship with a local church. Inevitably, a candidate for ministry is encouraged to be involved in a local church, at least insofar as it advances them towards ordination.

I am the product of growing up in a United Methodist Church. I also set out to find my own church to be involved in when I moved for seminary.

Before I learned about the various theories on when the Gospels were written, I encountered them in Sunday school and Vacation Bible School. Before I was taught Methodist history and theology, I sang the hymns of Charles Wesley. And before I learned various doctrines of atonement, I knew all too well the taste of bread laced with the flavor of grape juice

In other words, my academic learning in seminary was always undergirded by the experiences I had in the local church that served as an existential foundation. The joining of the two provided, for me, three years of spiritual formation that words cannot even begin to express.

The problem may not be in the seminaries themselves as much as it’s with pastors who stop their educational experience when they graduate from seminary. This choice is fed by many factors including the demands of life and a heavy work load. And let’s not forget the ever-present expectations of annual conference leaders who value pastors more for the work they produce than the personal growth they achieve.

Resentment of seminaries is not a new thing in our denomination. I can’t tell you how many seasoned pastors lovingly told me “not to take that stuff too seriously” before I began seminary. It was made clear to me early on that the “real knowledge” was to be found in the practice of ministry and not in the academic setting of seminary.

We’re all to blame

The United Methodist Church is not in decline because of its seminaries. It’s in decline because of itself. We’re all to blame for the fact that we, as the church, have not lived up to God’s call to bind up the brokenness in our communities and be beacons of love and justice for all people. It’s our fault if we’ve been more absorbed with creating good consumers and responsible citizens than we have in making disciples, formed by the words of Holy Scripture, and committed in following the radical ways of Jesus.

If we lack spiritual depth, then it’s because our church culture as a whole has forfeited the value of true commitment in discipleship in favor of a high-numerical-yield, low-spiritual-depth version of church membership as a substitute for discipleship. This isn’t only the fault of our seminaries—it’s the collective fault of our denomination as a whole!

It makes me wonder sometimes, where did we create the divide between the academy and the local church? When did it become such a taboo thing to be so educated? When did we invent the notion that a graduate school education naturally causes one to lose the ability to relate in meaningful ways to others?

If seminary is the place where we’re trained in thinking theologically, and the local church is where we practice such thinking, being and doing, then the two worlds naturally depend on each other. You can’t have one without the other! As a friend of mine (who’s also a recent graduate of seminary) put it recently, “I am tired of hearing that education and discipleship aren’t connected . . . We need more of both, and more of one should increase the other.”

As a young clergyperson, I have to admit that much of the language of dashboards, metrics and “numbers do actually matter” does not resonate with me as it might with those in positions of institutional leadership. If we’re called to be disciples who disciple one another, then surely there are more important matters than measuring every little thing we do and obsessing over the preservation of our institution. And we can’t get too consumed in heaping blame on one another.

Maybe we should worry more about losing our lives for the sake of the One who called us into the ministry of loving, teaching and serving all people everywhere. Growth of the kingdom does not always correlate to numerical and material growth in the denomination. And we can’t always track where the Holy Spirit will lead us.

But maybe I’m wrong about all of that. After all, it’s just a silly lesson I probably picked up in seminary.

[This post will run on Candler’s blog soon. I wanted to give a “first-run” on here. Enjoy!

They say all jokes have a hint of truth in them. That’s what makes them funny. There was a joke I heard when I started seminary three years ago that goes something like this:

Seminary is much like the Easter Story. The first year they’ll crucify you and things you believe in. The second year they’ll bury you in the tomb of major classes, lots of reading and papers. And the third year you’ll finally be resurrected.

It seems like yesterday I was in my first semester of classes at Candler. I can remember the conversations about classes, professors, and all of the work required to pass. If I think about it really hard, I can remember the feeling that three years would be an eternity. Graduation wasn’t even on the horizon—it was nowhere close to conceptualization.

Over that year, I can remember seemingly endless hours of reading and writing. I can remember assignments that made no sense at all and being asked to write papers on matters I could hardly spell, much less articulate with any sort of coherent or precise thought. All the while I was asked to sit through some of the most uncomfortable, and seemingly unending, sessions with people I did not know from Adam’s house cat (I’m from South Georgia so you’ll have to forgive the colloquialism) as we reflected on things we were experiencing at our Contextual Education sites or in the classroom.

I can remember the first time I was asked to critically consider some of the quant Sunday School lessons of my childhood in a classroom setting. It was as though someone had the audacity to walk right up to me and ask for the cloak off my back. How dare they ask me critically examine the stories of my childhood! But engaging in such critical thinking caused me to have a wonderfully scary encounter with foundational beliefs beginning to crack. I intentionally mean that it was both wonderful and scary all at once. It became clear early on that who I was when I came to seminary was not going to identical to who I would be after the rigors of the program. And that was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

By my second year I began to experiment with trying on various voices. Amid the burying underneath mounds of materials and thinkers, one begins to find that some of the thinkers resonate with them. Some have special qualities that tickle the fancy of budding theologians in such a way that often, you try their voice on for size. It’s okay to do that. Some voices fit better than others. Some you will quickly outgrow like a child can outgrow clothes in a single season. Others stay with you, like old friends. Either way, the array of voices has the ability to cause mass confusion in the life of the “in-process” seminarian. But you continue to listen for in the middle of the confusion are sometimes subtle, yet profound moments when they surprise you and sing in a melodious chorus together.

And then comes the glorious possibilities of being in your final year. By this time you have successfully questioned and re-questioned much of what you came to seminary believing and thinking. Some you have kept because, after all, Candler will never take the easy road of simply telling you what to believe. You will form relationships with professors and peers and, dare I say it, you will enjoy classes. As the end of seminary comes closer and closer you will even have days where you’re sad that what seemed like such a distant possibility is slowly, but surely becoming an all-too-close reality. You are, all at once, a bumbling mess of mixed emotions. Job possibilities hang in the balance. Ordination pressures arrive. The end of school means the exciting end to deadlines and never-ending papers. And then it hits you—you will soon no longer be able to hide under a guise of safety at Candler. You will learn that you will soon have to enter the world and do this ministry thing on your own.

You realize a couple of important things after your time at Candler is finished. First, after I realized how scary it will be to finish and “do this ministry thing on my own,” I remembered, “I’m not on my own at all.” God is with us no matter where we go. And we have the opportunity to be a valued member of a division of the “communion of saints” at Candler. And so you are never, ever alone in the world. Secondly, there will come a day that you will speak and it will not be the voice of Barth, Luther, Luke Timothy Johnson, Tom Long, Carol Newsome, Athanasius, James Cone or Howard Thurman. It will be you. And it might scare you the first time you hear it. It will sound like you, but not the you that you once knew. And it will also sound like those wonderful conversation partners you developed in your studies, but not exactly because none of them will ever be a perfect fit. It will be a you that is not finished developing yet. In fact, you’ll realize that seminary is only the beginning this new you.

But don’t let me spoil the ending too much. Enjoy your ride and know that you have a community of saints, both past and present, lifting you up in prayer through the deadlines, pressures, all-night study sessions, and exams that will ultimately lead toward a transformation that you never thought possible.

Maybe folks are right in that all jokes have a hint of truth in them. Maybe seminary can and will reflect a smaller version of the grand and glorious story of redemption in the lives of each and every student ready to embark on the journey.

I am sitting in my first preparatory meeting for the World Methodist Evangelism Institute Brazil Seminar. We are assigned to do journal entries so I want to use this journal entry to discuss some thoughts and reactions I have as I learn about Brazil and its culture in regards to Christianity and this seminar.

I think I would like to try to do a Wesleyan Fast/Prayer on Fridays. This requires me to not take solid food from sundown Thursday to mid-afternoon Friday. I am supposed to fast and pray for this trip. Fasting has always been hard for me because I work out a lot and love to eat. This is why I think I want to try to make this sacrifice for the benefit of praying for this conference.

Dr. de Souza is discussing how Atheism is the fastest growing “religious” group in Brazil. Much of Brazil is culturally Christian and Atheism is now growing among the people. This strikes me as interesting. I guess I just figured this was an American anomaly. Also, the Prosperity Gospel is rampant in Brazilian churches. It’s interesting to learn Christianity is facing some of the same difficulties as the American church. Oddly, I feel a real bond as the holy catholic church in learning this. If one struggles, it seems we all struggle.

I am very excited about this trip. The church I am being appointed to is planning to offer some money for this trip. They want to invest both in me and my views of evangelism. This means a lot to me. But more importantly, I am beginning to feel most at home in my call for ministry both in that church and through this trip. Thanks be to God.